Russia’s new president Vladimir Putin says he talks more now to his predecessor Boris Yeltsin than ever before — and once went to his house to eat sushi.

“Before his resignation, I went to Yeltsin’s house only with business questions, with documents,” Putin said in a book excerpt printed in Newsweek magazine.

“Now we communicate more often than before his resignation,” Putin said in “First Person: Vladimir Putin,” a collection of interviews.

“Now we have a different relationship. I can just call him and talk to him.”

Putin continued: “Recently I went [to Yeltsin’s home] on business and [he] said, ‘Stay for dinner. We’ll have sushi.’

“It turns out he once tried sushi in a restaurant and liked it. So his wife and daughters decided to arrange such a Japanese dinner for [him] at home,” he said. “Of course, I stayed.”

In the book, Putin — who took over after Yeltsin quit nearly three months ago — also talks about his childhood, his family, his career as a Soviet spy (he rose to be head of the KGB), the fall of communism and the war in Chechnya.

Putin recalls packing up and burning files at KGB offices in East Germany in 1989 as Soviet hegemony over Eastern Europe began to crumble.

“Crowds gathered around our building,” he said. “It was a serious threat. Nobody lifted a finger to protect us. I called our troop group and explained the situation.”

Asked about Russian journalist Andrei Babitsky, whose reporting from the Chechen side in the war angered the Kremlin, Putin said, “It is not good to collaborate with bandits and to write that they are cutting off the heads of our soldiers.”